It's starting to look like the end of an era for Ubuntu users as Canonical mull the creation of an ISO that won't fit onto a CDR. The question is, does it matter? Canonical owes at least part of its success with Ubuntu Linux to the unique way that it has been distributed. From the start it has been available as a downloadable ISO image and a free CD, posted at no cost to the user. This was great news for people who wanted to install Linux but did not have the luxury of a decent Internet connection. In a sense, installing via a CDR image has always been like a kind of cache, in that you're moving part of the content that you need onto permanent storage rather than pulling it through the network connection

- Download iso, burn iso to CD/DVD is a lot easier than the same process on USB
- the CD/DVD OR the USB will have to be empty in order to make the distro bootable. An empty CD(RW) is always available, an empty USB often means moving data to local storage, claiming the entire USB for the distro at first, then moving data from local storage back to the USB

If there is a method for making keeping data on the USB while adding the distro and making the USB bootable, that would solve the above problems